Description

"What God abandoned, these defended / And saved the sum of things for pay." 

In the bleak winter of 1941-1942, no American or British force could stem the tide in Southeast Asia, as the Philippines, Thailand, Malaya, and Singapore fell to the victorious Japanese. Only in Burma was there a ray of hope. There, over beleaguered Rangoon, a few dozen Americans clawed Japanese warplanes from the sky for a cash bounty from the Chinese government. Wearing mismatched uniforms, with Chinese insignia, and flying cast-off fighter planes, they did what no other air force seemed able to do, and won immortality as the Flying Tigers.

Daniel Ford wrote "the definitive history" of the American Volunteer Group, as it was formally known. Here, he has collected five e-books about the Flying Tigers into an omnibus that details the AVG's planes, pilots, and history as remembered in the United States and in Japan. An essential collection for every admirer of the Flying Tigers.

"The AVG's first encounter with the Japanese Air Force over Kunming, China,  on 20 December 1941 is often written about. The version Dan Ford presents  here is probably the most complete picture extant." (First Blood for the  Flying Tigers)

"I can wholeheartedly recommend his work to anyone desiring insight into  the early years of the JAAF" (Rising Sun Over Burma)

"Very well written and full of new information about a fascinating time in our history" (100 Hawks for China)

"A unique insight into how the Japanese appeared to the pilots meeting  them, and how the AVG learned to deal with them" (AVG Confidential)

About the author

Daniel Ford has spent a lifetime studying and writing about the wars of the past hundred years, from Ireland's war of liberation to America's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. A U.S. Army veteran and a reporter in Vietnam, he wrote the novel that was filmed as Go Tell the Spartans, starring Burt Lancaster. As a historian, he is best known for his prize-winning study of the American Volunteer Group--the gallant 'Flying Tigers' of the Second World War. Most recently, he turned to the 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany and Russia, through the eyes of a young girl whom he courted in later years. Most of his books and many shorter pieces are available for Amazon's Kindle ebook reader. Visit www.DanFordBooks.com and sign up for a monthly newsletter about war, flying, and less important subjects.

Similar

During World War II, in the skies over Rangoon, Burma, a handful of American pilots met and bloodied the "Imperial Wild Eagles" of Japan and won immortality as the Flying Tigers. One of America's most famous combat forces, the Tigers were recruited to defend beleaguered China for $600 a month and a bounty of $500 for each Japanese plane they shot down--fantastic money in an era when a Manhattan hotel room cost three dollars a night.

To bring his prize-winning history of the American Volunteer Group up to date, Daniel Ford has twice rewritten his original text, drawing on the most recent U.S., British, and Japanese scholarship, along with new information about AVG pilots and crewmen, their Royal Air Force colleagues, and their Japanese opponents.

"Admirable," wrote Chennault biographer Martha Byrd of Ford's original text. "A readable book based on sound sources. Expect some surprises." Flying Tigers won the Aviation/Space Writers Association Award of Excellence in the year of its first publication.

During World War II, a group of American fighter pilots roamed the skies over China and Burma, menacing the Japanese war effort without letup. Flamboyant, daring, and courageous, they were called the Flying Tigers. The Tigers, who had been recruited from the Army, Navy, and Marines, first saw action as a volunteer group fighting on the side of the Chiang Kia-shek's China against Japan. Trained in the unconventional air-combat tactics of their maverick leader Claire Lee Chennault, they racked up some of the most impresive air victory records of World War II. This is the story of Chennault and his magnificent Tigers — and how they performed the impossible.

John Boyd was arguably the greatest American military theorist since the sea power strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan at the turn of the 20th Century. Best known for his formulation of the OODA Loop as a model for competitive decision making, Colonel Boyd was also an original thinker in developing tactics for air-to-air combat, designing warplanes, and the fluid, mobile warfare known to the Germans as blitzkrieg and to modern armies as "maneuver warfare." As much as anyone, John Boyd was the architect of the two great campaigns against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, both the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and the 2003 "March Up" to Baghdad by the U.S. Army and Marines. But what of the costly, drawn-out insurgency that baffled the invaders once Baghdad had fallen? In this short book, Daniel Ford applies Boyd's thinking to the problem of counter-insurgency. Unlike the U.S. military in 2003, it turns out that Boyd had indeed put considerable thought into what might transpire after an effective "blitz" campaign. Indeed, he found many similarities between "blitzers" and what he preferred to call guerrillas, and he thought that they might be defeated by turning their own tactics against them. This is an expanded version of a dissertation submitted in the War Studies program at King's College London.

For generations, warlords fought bitterly for dominance in a land without a king, leaving a fractured, war-torn country plagued by thieves, slavers, and the servants of dark gods and darker magic. Allystaire Coldbourne travels a treacherous path toward his Ordination as a holy knight of legend, a Paladin, a savior of the people. But to fulfill this role, he—and the unexpected allies he finds along the way—must face the demonic, sorcerous evil that stalks the land, the wrath of gods and men, and his own dark past.

Daniel Ford learned to fly at the age when most of us are well into retirement. In this short book, he tells how it was to have a flight instructor one-third his age, to make a Sentimental Journey to the Pennsylvania airport where the Piper Cub first saw the light of day, to practice spins and aerobatic turns in a Great Lakes biplane, to fly low and slow in New Jersey, to make a leisurely tour around the Big Lake and into his past, and to have a close encounter with the National Defense Emergency of September 11, 2001. A delightful read for anyone who ever dreamed of becoming a pilot. Illustrated; about 11,000 words.

When Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in 1939, their victims included a five-year-old named Basia. Her father and brother were murdered in the Katyn Forest massacres, and the women and children were loaded into a cattle car for a horrific three-week journey to the steppes of Kazakhstan, there to survive as best they could. Over the next eight years, Basia would escape through Persia, Lebanon, and Egypt to safe haven in England.Meanwhile, Daniel Ford grew up in a United States mired by the Great Depression. Europe's agony was America's windfall! He went from hardscrabble poverty to a fellowship that took him to the English university where Basia was also a student. This is the story of their meeting, their travels, and their parting. "An extraordinary book, highly original, gripping, at once full of joy and of sorrow" (Cosmopolitan Review).

The adventure continues... Ordained by an ancient goddess of mercy and light, former knight Allystaire Coldbourne has become a paladin, a hero out of legend. But evil stalks him, angry gods align against him, and greedy warlords want him dead. With the help of his friends, each blessed with extraordinary powers by the Goddess, Allystaire must escape the clutches of sorcerers and wicked rulers who will stop at nothing to destroy him as he continues his dangerous quest to bring peace and unity to the fractured and war-torn Baronies. With the Longest Night of mid-winter approaching, the Goddess weakens and armies march—armies determined to bring destruction and horror to the paladin and all who follow him. Allystaire is soon left with only his powers, his handful of friends, and his mission to be a beacon of hope, still and bright, in the encroaching darkness.

John Boyd was a fighter pilot in the Korean War, an instructor at the US Air Force Fighter Weapons School, and arguably America's greatest military thinker of the 20th Century. His concept of the OODA Loop helped guide the US military during two wars against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This 4000-word 'long essay' was originally prepared for the War in the Modern World program at King's College London by Daniel Ford, an American journalist and historian. Revised 2014 to incorporate a chapter from his larger study of John Boyd's thinking, published as A Vision So Noble.

Olga Greenlaw kept the "war diary" of the American Volunteer Group--the Flying Tigers--while those gallant mercenaries defended Burma and China from Japanese aggression during the opening months of the Pacific War. Returning to the United States in 1942, she wrote The Lady and the Tigers, which war correspondent Leland Stowe hailed as "an authoritative, gutsy and true to life story of the AVG."

Out of print for more than half a century, her book has been brought up to date by Daniel Ford, author of the AVG's definitive history, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers. What's more, Ford explains for the first time where Olga and Harvey Greenlaw came from, how they became caught up in the saga of the Flying Tigers, and what happened to them after their tumultuous year with the AVG.

For generations, warlords fought bitterly for dominance in a land without a king, leaving a fractured, war-torn country plagued by thieves, slavers, and the servants of dark gods and darker magic. Allystaire Coldbourne travels a treacherous path toward his Ordination as a holy knight of legend, a Paladin, a savior of the people. But to fulfill this role, he—and the unexpected allies he finds along the way—must face the demonic, sorcerous evil that stalks the land, the wrath of gods and men, and his own dark past.

The adventure continues... Ordained by an ancient goddess of mercy and light, former knight Allystaire Coldbourne has become a paladin, a hero out of legend. But evil stalks him, angry gods align against him, and greedy warlords want him dead. With the help of his friends, each blessed with extraordinary powers by the Goddess, Allystaire must escape the clutches of sorcerers and wicked rulers who will stop at nothing to destroy him as he continues his dangerous quest to bring peace and unity to the fractured and war-torn Baronies. With the Longest Night of mid-winter approaching, the Goddess weakens and armies march—armies determined to bring destruction and horror to the paladin and all who follow him. Allystaire is soon left with only his powers, his handful of friends, and his mission to be a beacon of hope, still and bright, in the encroaching darkness.

During World War II, in the skies over Rangoon, Burma, a handful of American pilots met and bloodied the "Imperial Wild Eagles" of Japan and won immortality as the Flying Tigers. One of America's most famous combat forces, the Tigers were recruited to defend beleaguered China for $600 a month and a bounty of $500 for each Japanese plane they shot down--fantastic money in an era when a Manhattan hotel room cost three dollars a night.

To bring his prize-winning history of the American Volunteer Group up to date, Daniel Ford has twice rewritten his original text, drawing on the most recent U.S., British, and Japanese scholarship, along with new information about AVG pilots and crewmen, their Royal Air Force colleagues, and their Japanese opponents.

"Admirable," wrote Chennault biographer Martha Byrd of Ford's original text. "A readable book based on sound sources. Expect some surprises." Flying Tigers won the Aviation/Space Writers Association Award of Excellence in the year of its first publication.

It's the summer of 1964. The bush hat, not the steel helmet, is the favored headgear of the sixteen thousand American advisors in South Vietnam. They love their work, and they're very good at it. How can they possibly fail?

Covering their war are a handful of foreign reporters, including novelist Daniel Ford. Armed with a camera and a notebook, he wanders the country on foot and by military transport--helicopter, jeep, landing craft, junk, armored personnel carrier, and an Air Force flare ship--from the Mekong Delta to the Central Highlands. Once or twice a week, or whenever he is reunited with his Hermes portable, he types up an account of what he has seen and done. Here is that journal, 50-odd years after it was written. It is a freeze-frame picture of the Vietnam War before it became a quagmire. "How good-hearted we were!" Ford says of himself and the men he met in his travels. "And how badly it all turned out."

When Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in 1939, their victims included a five-year-old named Basia. Her father and brother were murdered in the Katyn Forest massacres, and the women and children were loaded into a cattle car for a horrific three-week journey to the steppes of Kazakhstan, there to survive as best they could. Over the next eight years, Basia would escape through Persia, Lebanon, and Egypt to safe haven in England.Meanwhile, Daniel Ford grew up in a United States mired by the Great Depression. Europe's agony was America's windfall! He went from hardscrabble poverty to a fellowship that took him to the English university where Basia was also a student. This is the story of their meeting, their travels, and their parting. "An extraordinary book, highly original, gripping, at once full of joy and of sorrow" (Cosmopolitan Review).

Daniel Ford learned to fly at the age when most of us are well into retirement. In this short book, he tells how it was to have a flight instructor one-third his age, to make a Sentimental Journey to the Pennsylvania airport where the Piper Cub first saw the light of day, to practice spins and aerobatic turns in a Great Lakes biplane, to fly low and slow in New Jersey, to make a leisurely tour around the Big Lake and into his past, and to have a close encounter with the National Defense Emergency of September 11, 2001. A delightful read for anyone who ever dreamed of becoming a pilot. Illustrated; about 11,000 words.

John Boyd was a fighter pilot in the Korean War, an instructor at the US Air Force Fighter Weapons School, and arguably America's greatest military thinker of the 20th Century. His concept of the OODA Loop helped guide the US military during two wars against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This 4000-word 'long essay' was originally prepared for the War in the Modern World program at King's College London by Daniel Ford, an American journalist and historian. Revised 2014 to incorporate a chapter from his larger study of John Boyd's thinking, published as A Vision So Noble.

John Boyd was arguably the greatest American military theorist since the sea power strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan at the turn of the 20th Century. Best known for his formulation of the OODA Loop as a model for competitive decision making, Colonel Boyd was also an original thinker in developing tactics for air-to-air combat, designing warplanes, and the fluid, mobile warfare known to the Germans as blitzkrieg and to modern armies as "maneuver warfare." As much as anyone, John Boyd was the architect of the two great campaigns against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, both the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and the 2003 "March Up" to Baghdad by the U.S. Army and Marines. But what of the costly, drawn-out insurgency that baffled the invaders once Baghdad had fallen? In this short book, Daniel Ford applies Boyd's thinking to the problem of counter-insurgency. Unlike the U.S. military in 2003, it turns out that Boyd had indeed put considerable thought into what might transpire after an effective "blitz" campaign. Indeed, he found many similarities between "blitzers" and what he preferred to call guerrillas, and he thought that they might be defeated by turning their own tactics against them. This is an expanded version of a dissertation submitted in the War Studies program at King's College London.

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